Below you will find performance results for
the currently shipping Power Mac Towers, and a some from previous
generations. This will hopefully give you an impression of
relative performances. We will be adding new machines on an
on-going basis ... so check back once in a while.

The current crop of Power Macs were tested when
running OS 10.2 .. the operating system they shipped with.
Likewise the earlier machines were tested running the version
of OS X they shipped with. However the scores for the earlier
machines are relative, rather than absolute. The relative
scores should be fairly accurate. Just keep in mind that the
marks for the older machines may be 'in the ballpark', rather
than spot on.

Of all the machines listed below, only the 800
MHz one shipped without a L3 cache. This has given it slightly
lower scores in some of the tests.

As you'll see in the performance results below,
the 1.25 GHz machine, for the most part, is the only tower
that really pulls away from the pack. However you pay
a hefty price premium for this performance. The top of the
line machine is $1,600 more than the dual 867 MHz machine.
You might have trouble convincing the Boss that you need an
upgrade if you have a fairly recent Professional Power Mac.

If you are in a production type environment
and have a strategy for utilizing all the power that this
crop of Dual Processor Towers put at your disposal, the machines
will pay for themselves. You should take note though that
in most of the test below huge amounts of processing potential
was left unused by the applications we ran. For example our
QuickTime DV encode only used 60% of the processing capability
of the 1.25 GHz Mac. 40% of its processing power sat there
twiddling its thumbs waiting to dance. To utilized these machines
to the max you need to keep them fed with data. Our testing
indicates this means running multiple jobs at once. This is
now something that is quite easy and efficient to do with
OS X. But it requires some planning on your part.

Individual Tests

The tests below are from our suite of real
world application tests. These tests feature a diverse
selection of applications commonly used by the Mac community.
The test suite was designed to render an accurate and well
rounded picture of a machine's performance. All of the tests
below (with the exception of the game test) were timed with
a stopwatch. The times were then converted to percentages
relative to the Dual Processor G4/1 GHz released in January
of 2002. This machine is set to 100%. For all scores higher
numbers are better

Desktop Tests

Booting Classic under OS 10.2 (Jaguar) is much faster
than under previous versions of OS X. Booting Classic
on the 1.25 GHz machine took only 18 seconds

The copy folder test not only stresses drive
performance, but also takes advantage of faster processing
capability & caching schemes. The new models really
outshine the previous crop. This can make a lot of difference
to how responsive your system feels

In the single file test the the processor
& caching capability of the machine is less of a factor

Drive performance appears to be the prime
mover here

Only those machines with CD burning capability
could be tested. No surprise here. Machines with the SuperDrive
burn CDs slower. The 4 machines on the top have a burn speed
that max out at 8X. The 800 MHz max out at 24X. And the
867 MHz at burns at up to 16X.

The test above creates and destroys 1,000
windows. See the Let1kWindowsBloom
site for more info. For some reason there is not very
much variation in the scores for this test. However we found
about a 13% performance improvement moving from OS 10.1
to 10.2

Large document is scrolled from one end to
the other using Classic OS 9 when booted in OS 10. This
test gauges on-screen graphics performance. We think that
the performance of the 800 MHz machine is hurt to a certain
degree in this test and the one above, because of it's lack
of a L3 cache

Large Document & Database Type Tests

A Macro
(series of complex actions) was run in Microsoft's Word
program. Word is part of Office
X

A Macro (series of complex actions) was
run in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program. Excel is part
of Office
X

This test takes place in a large AppleWorks
document. Here you see the 800 MHz machine also turning
in a lower score. Again we believe due to the lack of a
L3
backside cache

Jaguar's new File Search function relies
on both processor and drive performance

Number Crunching & Rendering Tests

The Fractal
program has been highly tuned to take advantage of the G4
and is precisely the type of work that the G4 was made for.
It will also gobble up whatever processing capability is
present. This is a good test for assessing the fundamental
processing potential of each machine. Really highlights
the processing advantage of a dual processor machines.

Encoding/Decoding Tests

A Sorenson
encode compresses a QuickTime movie for streaming on the
Web .. another processor intensive task, but one that does
not take advantage of dual processors. However on the high-end
machine only 50% of the processing capacity was being utilized
by the encode leaving you 50% for other tasks

Converting QuickTime
movies to DV allows you to import them into iMovie. Dual
processors shine here. The top machine is utilizing 60%
of its processing capacity

CD-ROM drive speed and CPU processing power
are the factors influencing the scores above. Our assumption
is that the CD drive speed is the bottleneck in the top
of the line Power Macs above. The top four machines have
the SuperDrive which max out at a read speed of 24X. On
the top machine 65% of the processing potential of the machine
was being utilized.

As you can see by the consistency of the numbers,
this is straight processing work. Dual processors are not
a factor as Stuffit only makes use of one

Multitasking

QuickTime DV Encode and MP3 Encode performed
at the same time. Dual Processor machines rule the day

MP3 Encode, AppleWorks search & replace
and folder copy are all carried out at the same time. If
you need to have your computer carry out multiple activities
at the same time, a dual processor machine will definitely
get you there faster.

QuickTime Sorenson encode and Fractal render
are both carried out at the same time. The Dual processor
1.25 GHz Power Mac is almost twice as fast as the single
processor 933 MHz. 100% of the processing capability of
each machine was utilized.

Gaming

Giants
is tuned to take advantage of the processor. Indeed, when
run on a dual processor machine, you will see Giants fly
ahead of the same game running on a single processor
machine. It also helps to have a better graphics card.
The 1.25 GHz machine turned in 55 frames per second the
800 MHz machine 18.3